Saturday, February 18, 2012

It wasn't meant to get any sort of attention, I just needed to come up with a disease name.

To my surprise, my stats have since shown a surprising number of people googling "Hufnagel's Syndrome" trying to find out what it was, then being directed back to the post. I've also received about 20 emails asking about it.

So here is the answer: There is no such disease.

The name idea is from a TV show I grew up watching, St. Elsewhere, set in a teaching hospital.

Florence Hufnagel (played by the mostly forgotten, but truly awesome, Florence Halop) was a recurring character. She was the classic patient-from-hell that we all encounter during our training (I didn't realize how accurate her portrayal was until I did my residency 10 years later). She was comically abusive and sarcastic, and made you realize how hard it could be to try and take care of someone you couldn't stand.

Her character made such an impression on a generation of TV watchers (and future doctors) that as recently as 2010 she was being cited in the news as an example.

In one of the most memorable scenes in TV history, Mrs. Hufnagel died from a bizarre combination of cardiac surgery complications and (more importantly) a malfunctioning adjustable hospital bed. It folded up into a V shape, bending her in half and suffocating her. Her death scene showed only one arm, sticking straight out the side of the folded bed.

In a bizarre postscript, it later turned out that she'd left her entire estate to one of the residents (Elliot Axelrod). When he met her lawyer it was (roughly) $50,000, but with taxes, funeral costs, and "an ongoing legal action with American Samoa" it left him with something like $18.73.

So, if you really want to think there's a disorder called "Hufnagel's Syndrome," I suppose it would be being killed by an electric adjustable bed.

16 comments:

I *loved* St Elsewhere!!! Can't remember many of the names now but do remember the episode where just about every character called Ehrlich a pig... It was a good show, funny and occasionally heartbreaking.

For me Hufnagel is a name from a cartoon I watched when I was a kid. It was a Hungarian family cartoon and there was a lady who was always unhappy with her husband. Her favorite saying was "Why, o, why didn't I marry Pishta Hufnagel, when I had the chance".

Loved St. Elsewhere! I remember the episode where Mrs Hufnagel got trapped in the bed -- laughed and laughed. I still use "St Elsewhere" as a location when I ask patients where they had their previous scns done, and all they can tell me -- "that office downtown, somewhere near Yonge St."

couldn't we just use it as a charting shorthand for "abusive and rude patient"? there's a great list of British chart shorthands, most rude, somewhere out on the internets. my favorite was "handbag positive" for an elderly demented woman clutching her handbag in the hospital.

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This blog is entirely for entertainment purposes. All posts about patients may be fictional, or be my experience, or were submitted by a reader, or any combination of the above. Factual statements may or may not be accurate.

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